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Hartwig von Ludwiger
Hartwig von Ludwiger (29 June 1895 – 5 May 1947) was a General der Infanterie of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was executed for war crimes by Yugoslavia after the war. Biography Hartwig von Ludwiger was born on 29 June 1895 in Beuthen, Silesia, in the German Empire (present-day Bytom, Poland). On 17 August 1914, he was called to the Prussian Army shortly after the start of World War I and served in the Battle of the Somme on the Western Front. He also fought at Champagne, Arras, and Maas, and earned the Iron Cross during the war. Wounded several times, he also gained the Silver Wound Badge. After the end of the war in 1918, he resumed his service in the Reichswehr and suppressed Polish Silesian uprisings in the early 1920s. He resumed command of German military units after the rise of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1933, and on 1 March 1940 his German 83rd Infantry Regiment took part in the battle of France during World War II. Ludwiger also fought in Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in 1941, but his unit was sent back to occupied France after they suffered heavy losses in Operation Typhoon against Moscow. Later, they were sent back to southern Ukraine and fought in the battles for the Kerch Peninsula in the Crimea and in February 1943 his soldiers were sent to Yugoslavia. In April 1943 he was made Major-General and he took over the German 724th Jager Regiment and the Bulgarian Kampfgruppe von Ludwiger regiment. He obliterated Chetniks and Josef Broz Tito's partisans in Montenegro in the 15 May-16 June 1943 Battle of Sutjeska (Case Black, also known as the "Fifth Enemy Offensive"). On 9 June his Kampfgruppe was disbanded due to heavy losses, but he did not quit his anti-partisan activities. 50 civilians were killed for every German soldier killed, and in July he moved his reign of terror to Greece. On 10 July 18 German soldiers were killed, and although Ludwiger was stopped from civilian reprisals, he killed 12 "suspicious gangsters" in Nafpaktos. In September 1943 he massacred the Acqui Division of Italy on the island of Cephalonia off Greece when Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, while elsewhere (in southern France and the Balkans) Italian troops were disarmed by the Germans. On 1 January 1944 Ludwiger was made a Lieutenant-General and SS divisions aided civilian reprisals that he ordered. By the end of October 1944 he evacuated Greece out of fear that the Soviets would encircle his forces during Operation Bagration, but Romanian and Bulgarian forces stuck the Germans in bitter fighting in the northern Balkans with aid from partisans and the Soviet Red Army. On 13 May 1945 he was captured by the Red Army and handed over to the Yugoslavs. Death From 27 March to 4 April 1947, Ludwiger was put on a court-martial trial by Yugoslavia. For the torture and murder of POWs, torching, looting, sending noncombatants to concentration camps, and harming women and children, Ludwiger was executed by firing squad in Belgrade. Category:German generals Category:Generals Category:Germans Category:Killed